CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 2/6/2015

Paul Feeley: 1957–1962

In Garth Greenan Gallery's concise new monograph on American painter Paul Feeley, David Anfan writes, "As a whole, what are Feeley's curves, colors and cool loveliness if not manifestations of a plain style, an ethical will to let simplicity and ease seem natural and effortless? Akin to the predilection for the primitive or the archaic, this ostensible directness in fact presupposes high sophistication. Both ideas hark back at least to the Roman orator Cicero.
 The casual air of Feeley's visual effects—done, as 
it were, with the left hand—reached fruition only toward the end of his life after decades of quite different work and he refined them through the painstaking crucible of his draftsmanship. This chimes with Cicero's observation: 'Plainness of style seems easy to imitate at first thought, but when attempted, nothing is more difficult.' 'Plain' also holds a dual meaning—in the manner that Jorge Luis Borges pinpointed when he wrote that 'the plain style... is doubly metaphoric, because style means, etymologically, a pointed instrument, and plain is akin to a flat plain, smooth, without cracks.' Borges' metaphors—style/stylus and plain/plane—measure the span of Feeley's artistic quest. It grew from observational drawing into a quietly captivating abstract fusion of outline, color and flatness. In such plain images, we might think that only elegance and neatness remain. If so, these modest riches suffice because, like the words of Cicero's artfully guileless orator, they continue to reward and resonate with the knowing eye and mind." Kilroy (1957) is reproduced from Paul Feeley: 1957-1962.